


The Shadow of the Past

by Lassarina



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 14:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/pseuds/Lassarina
Summary: Ashe returns to Rabanastre after the final battle, and finds ghosts in every shadow.





	The Shadow of the Past

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Seventhe for the beta.

Ashe does not go straight to the palace.

Some of that is simple self-preservation; for all that the newly-inherited Larsa likely means her no ill, such sentiments take time to reach the rank and file, and in any event she will not trust her life to the likes of the Empire's soldiers after so many years spent avoiding and fighting them.

Then, too, she has never worn the crown of her forebears, nor proven her life and bloodline to Dalmasca. She glances at her belt pouch, tossed aside on the bed of this inn room, and the nethicite shard within it. Her uncle will buttress her claim, and Larsa promised to endorse it, but she needs something of her own line, something of Dalmasca, or she will never be able to call its throne her own. There is yet the question of Nabradia, but that is for archivists and genealogists to settle, not for her.

She walks to the windows. It is past sunset, so she opens the shutters to allow the cool of the desert night into the room, and her eyes are drawn to the palace. It has been so many years since she set foot there, and she fears she is grown too coarse for its confines. Never mind that her forefathers carved this palace, and this nation, with sword and plough and their own hands. She was not raised to be a warrior, had become one only of necessity, and a sword will not rebuild her nation, skilled though she may be in its use. The lessons of her childhood, on how to be a beautiful decoration and a treaty-bride, are worthless to her. When her brothers died, she learned some little of what she would need to be a queen, with the thought that Rasler's education would balance her and she would have years yet to learn from her father, but those plans are long dead and gone, broken like her husband's body.

To seize a nation, to take back one's birthright, by force of arms and bitter vengeance and sheer brilliant rage, is one task. To rule it, to nurture it, is another altogether.

Her gaze turns to the embers and smoke that yet rise from the hulk of fallen _Bahamut,_ and pain tries to touch her heart, at the loss of her friends, but she will not permit it. There will be time for grief, and it will have its day, but she learned at the hands of a harsh taskmaster how to put away her pain until it can be safely felt. She is not safe now. The walls of the inn are too thin, and it is an ill start to a reign indeed to have one's subjects hear one sobbing in the dead of night.

Instead, she takes a handful of Gil from her pouch and goes out to buy paper, pen, and ink, for she has much to do and little time in which to do it; she sits up half the night making lists.

Morning dawns with brutal force, the night's cool swept away in the searing light of day. Someone taps at the door. She opens it with caution, standing to the side with her sword in her hand, but the Imperial soldier beyond—not Basch, no Judge's helm, only an infantry lad younger than she—proffers only a precise obeisance and a missive, not a weapon. "From His Majesty Emperor Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, Your Majesty," he says courteously, his voice too low for any save her to hear. "He bid me wait for a response, if that suits Your Majesty."

Ashe steps back and gestures him into the room, sheathing her sword, but keeping a distance between them. The soldier fixes his gaze on the far wall and waits patiently.

The seal is the dragons entwined of House Solidor; she breaks the crimson wax and scans the contents of the letter. Larsa requests her presence at the Rozarrian Embassy, there to discuss the terms of Archades' withdrawal from Dalmascan soil. She appreciates the choice of venue.

"You may tell the Emperor—" how strange that a word she thinks of as bitterly sour on the tongue can become neutral as water "—that I will meet him there at the hour of Cancer." It is barely the hour of Gemini now; Cancer makes it mid-morning. She does not wish to wait until Leo, but neither will she rush at his pleasure.

The soldier repeats her message, and bows his way out. She turns back to the little table where she took her notes last night. She has no court attire, such as she wore before; they will take her in her armor and be glad of it.

She begins to review her notes for the meeting.

~*~

"This can wait, if Your Majesty wishes it so. I will be in Rabanastre a few days yet."

Ashe glances sideways at Basch— _Gabranth_ she must call him now, and to call her knight by that name sits ill indeed, but she understands his choice, though she likes it not at all. "I would have it done," she says.

She cannot see his expression beneath the Magister's helm, but she can picture it, after so long traveling together. She mislikes this imbalance, where her face is bare and his concealed. She turns away and walks up the palace steps. He keeps pace beside her. Larsa had offered up his services for any forays she must make into areas currently held by the Empire's soldiers, that none might mistake her presence. She can scarcely argue the necessity, but it chafes, as though she will hold her crown only on Larsa's tolerance. (That this is _true_ in some sense—that she can do this only because Larsa has decided he will grant her birthright to her without demanding terms in return—makes her more angry still.)

The guards at the door—so many guards for an empty palace—greet them with a salute, and open the doors for them. It has been years since anyone gave her these small courtesies of rank, and she finds them vaguely uncomfortable, like an old shirt that rubs uncomfortably on a changed body.

There is only one place she wishes to see today. The rest will wait until the palace is guarded by her own; she will send a message via Old Dalan to the remnants of the resistance, and go from there. For now she turns her steps to the east wing, where the royal apartments are. She moves quickly past the second floor and the king's chambers, where no doubt the Archadian consuls have ruined any memories that might have remained. She will have to see it, but not today.

Her own chambers are—were—on the floor above, and it is here that she falters. The door is draped in black silk ribbons, tied in cunning knots to resemble roses. She swallows hard. Behind that white door, carved with minutely detailed desert flowers, is all that might remain of Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, Princess of Dalmasca and heir to its throne.

Her companion waits in silence.

She lays her hand on the wrought silver handle—still cleanly polished; the servants have kept up this wing quite well—and turns it before she can change her mind, ducking beneath the ribbons and feeling them brush her hair like a ghostly caress.

The room is much as she remembers, but its luxury is still a shock: a towering canopied bed draped in gauzy netting to keep the insects off, lush pale carpets that only the rich can afford to keep clean, beautifully crafted wooden furniture kept fresh with the repeated application of lemon oil, and all the knickknacks and treasures an indulged daughter left scattered around her room. There are dozens of books she took from the palace library and never returned, piled on her escritoire. Were she to cross to the armoire and open it, she would see dozens of silk gauze dresses, from the pastels of her trousseau to the stark black of her mourning. If the servants have not emptied them in desperation to survive, there are caskets full of jewels—not the crown treasures, those are in Archades for "safekeeping," but dozens of lesser pieces suitable for a princess not yet twenty. She crosses the room as though under a sleep spell, and lays her hand upon the silk cover of the bed. She lay here a child, then a bride, then a widow; she has not yet lain here an orphan.

She will not.

She turns, too fast, and braces her hand on the post of the bed for a moment; Gabranth has stayed outside the room, to give her this semblance of privacy, and she is grateful, for it is something she will not see again any time soon.

She does not look again, but crosses the room and pulls the door firmly shut behind her. She will give instruction that every stick of furniture will be removed, and the room left empty until the time comes for her own daughter to live there. She is not a princess any longer, nor a member of the resistance. She is a queen, and it is time she put off the trappings of her past. If Dalmasca is to live, she must look only forward.

"I am ready," she says.

"Your Majesty," he says, and then stops.

"Princess Ashelia is dead," she says, scarce above a whisper, though there are no guards on this floor where there is nothing to defend. "Let us go."

She knows he has more to say, but instead he bows, and escorts her back out of the palace, where she lifts her face to the desert sun and breathes deep.

"Where will you go now?" He asks it courteously, and damn him, he has adopted the accent of his brother; there is naught left of her Knight-Captain there, and she could hate him for it, if not for what she said before. Princess Ashelia is dead, and with her the comfortable trappings of childhood. Queen Ashe must find her own champions.

"I require a leasing agent," she said. "I cannot well run my government from an inn room, and it will take time for the palace to be restored to me. They used to be above the Muthru Bazaar, if I recall my father aright."

"Aye," he says, and they turn toward the bazaar.

She leaves the palace behind, and will not look back.


End file.
